Typhoon Kalmaegi moves across central Philippines, leaving at least 1 dead and setting off floods

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A fast-moving typhoon barreled across the central Philippines Monday after slamming ashore overnight from the Pacific, leaving at least one person dead, causing flooding and power outages and displacing tens of thousands of people, officials said.

Typhoon Kalmaegi was blowing over the city of Sagay in central Negros Occidental province mid-morning with sustained winds of up to 150 kilometers (93 miles) per hour and gusts up to 185 kph (115 mph) after making landfall around midnight in the town of Silago town in the eastern province of Southern Leyte.

Kalmaegi, the 20th tropical cyclone to batter the Philippines this year, was moving northwestward at 25 kph (16 mph) and was forecast to start shifting away from the western section of the archipelago into the South China Sea later Tuesday.

An elderly villager drowned in floodwaters in Southern Leyte, where a provincewide power outage was also reported, officials said in an initial report without providing other details.

Ahead of the typhoon's landfall, disaster-response officials said more than 150,000 people had evacuated to safer ground in eastern Philippine provinces. Authorities warned of torrential rains, potentially destructive winds and storm surges of up to 3 meters (nearly 10 feet).

The typhoon, which has a broad wind band spanning about 600 kilometers (373 miles), was expected to batter central island provinces, including Cebu, which is still recovering from a 6.9-magnitude earthquake on Sept. 30 that left at least 79 people dead and displaced thousands when houses collapsed or were severely damaged.

On central Negros island, villagers were warned that heavy rains could cause volcanic mudflows on Kanlaon volcano, which has been emitting plumes of ash and steam in recent months, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

In Eastern Samar, one of east-central provinces first lashed by Kalmaegi, Gov. RV Evardone ordered mandatory evacuations and said residents readily moved to safety.

Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones on record, slammed ashore into Guiuan town in Eastern Samar in November 2013 then raked across the central Philippines, leaving more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattening entire villages and sweeping scores of ships inland. Haiyan demolished about a million houses and displaced more than 4 million people in one of the country’s poorest regions.

“Nobody’s complaining among the residents because of their experience with Yolanda. They know it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Evardone told The Associated Press, referring to Haiyan’s Philippine name.

Interisland ferries and fishing boats were prohibited from venturing into increasingly rough seas, stranding more than 3,500 passengers and cargo truck drivers in nearly 100 seaports, the coast guard said. A number of domestic flights were canceled.

The Philippines is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year. It is often hit by earthquakes and has more than a dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.

Men use a net as they try to catch fish from a nearby fish farm which overflowed due to floodwaters caused by Typhoon Kalmaegi as it affects Cebu city, central Philippines, Tuesday Nov. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Hernandez)

A boy shows a goldfish which they caught after a nearby fish farm overflowed due to floodwaters caused by Typhoon Kalmaegi as it affects Cebu city, central Philippines, Tuesday Nov. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Hernandez)

Residents walk outside their flooded homes as Typhoon Kalmaegi affects Cebu city, central Philippines, Tuesday Nov. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Hernandez)

A resident navigates a flooded street as they evacuate to safer grounds as Typhoon Kalmaegi affects Cebu city, central Philippines, Tuesday Nov. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Hernandez)

In this photo, provided by the Philippine Coast Guard, residents are evacuated to safer grounds as Typhoon Kalmaegi nears the area of San Julian, Eastern Samar province, central Philippines on Monday Nov. 3, 2025. (Philippine Coast Guard via AP)

In this photo, provided by the Philippine Coast Guard, residents are evacuated to safer grounds as Typhoon Kalmaegi nears the area of Guiuan, Eastern Samar province, central Philippines on Monday Nov. 3, 2025. (Philippine Coast Guard via AP)

In this photo, provided by the Philippine Coast Guard, residents are evacuated to safer grounds as Typhoon Kalmaegi nears the area of Guiuan, Eastern Samar province, central Philippines on Monday Nov. 3, 2025. (Philippine Coast Guard via AP)

In this photo provided by the Philippine Coast Guard, residents are evacuated to safer grounds as Typhoon Kalmaegi nears the area of San Miguel, Leyte province, Philippines on Monday Nov. 3, 2025. (Philippine Coast Guard via AP)

The Pentagon said Thursday that it is changing the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes so it concentrates on “reporting for our warfighters” and no longer includes “woke distractions.”

That message, in a social media post from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's spokesman, is short on specifics and does not mention the news outlet's legacy of independence from government and military leadership. It comes a day after The Washington Post reported that applicants for jobs at Stars and Stripes were being asked what they would do to support President Donald Trump's policies.

Stars and Stripes traces its lineage to the Civil War and has reported news about the military either in its newspaper or online steadily since World War II, largely to an audience of service members stationed overseas. Roughly half of its budget comes from the Pentagon and its staff members are considered Defense Department employees.

The outlet's mission statement emphasizes that it is “editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command” and that it is unique among news organizations tied to the Defense Department in being “governed by the principles of the First Amendment.”

Congress established that independence in the 1990s after instances of military leadership getting involved in editorial decisions. During Trump's first term in 2020, Defense Secretary Mark Esper tried to eliminate government funding for Stars and Stripes — to effectively shut it down — before he was overruled by the president.

Hegseth's spokesman, Sean Parnell, said on X Thursday that the Pentagon “is returning Stars and Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters.” He said the department will “refocus its content away from woke distractions.”

“Stars and Stripes will be custom tailored to our warfighters,” Parnell wrote. “It will focus on warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability and ALL THINGS MILITARY. No more repurposed DC gossip columns; no more Associated Press reprints.”

Parnell did not return a message seeking details. The Daily Wire reported, after speaking a Pentagon spokeswoman, that the plan is to have all Stars and Stripes content written by active-duty service members. Currently, Congress has mandated that the publication's publisher and top editor be civilians, said Max Lederer, its publisher.

The Pentagon also said that half of the outlet's content would be generated by the Defense Department, and that it would no longer publish material from The Associated Press or Reuters news services.

Also Thursday, the Pentagon issued a statement in the Federal Register that it would eliminate some 1990s era directives that governed how Stars and Stripes operates. Lederer said it's not clear what that would mean for the outlet's operations, or whether the Defense Department has the authority to do so without congressional authorization.

The publisher said he believes that Stars and Stripes is valued by the military community precisely because of its independence as a news organization. He said no one at the Pentagon has communicated to him what it wants from Stars and Stripes; he first learned of its intentions from reading Parnell's social media post.

“This will either destroy the value of the organization or significantly reduce its value,” Lederer said.

Jacqueline Smith, the outlet's ombudsman, said Stars and Stripes reports on matters important to service members and their families — not just weapons systems or war strategy — and she's detected nothing “woke” about its reporting.

“I think it's very important that Stars and Stripes maintains its editorial independence, which is the basis of its credibility,” Smith said. A longtime newspaper editor in Connecticut, Smith's role was created by Congress three decades ago and she reports to the House Armed Services Committee.

It's the latest move by the Trump administration to impose restrictions on journalists. Most reporters from legacy news outlets have left the Pentagon rather than to agree to new rules imposed by Hegseth that they feel would give him too much control over what they report and write. The New York Times has sued to overturn the regulations.

Trump has also sought to shut down government-funded outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that report independent news about the world in countries overseas.

Also this week, the administration raided the home of a Washington Post journalist as part of an investigation into a contractor accused of stealing government secrets, a move many journalists interpreted as a form of intimidation.

The Post reported that applicants to Stars and Stripes were being asked how they would advance Trump's executive orders and policy priorities in the role. They were asked to identify one or two orders or initiatives that were significant to them. That raised questions about whether it was appropriate for a journalist to be given what is, in effect, a loyalty test.

Smith said it was the government's Office of Personnel Management — not the newspaper — that was responsible for the question on job applications and said it was consistent with what was being asked of applicants for other government jobs.

But she said it was not something that should be asked of journalists. “The loyalty is to the truth, not the administration,” she said.

David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

US soldier Sgt. John Hubbuch of Versailles, Ky., one of the members of NATO led-peacekeeping forces in Bosnia reads Stars and Stripes newspaper on Sunday Feb. 14, 1999. (AP Photo/Amel Emric, File)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stands outside the Pentagon during a welcome ceremony for Japanese Defense Minister Shinjirō Koizumi at the Pentagon, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf/)

FILE - A GI with the U.S. 25th division reads Stars and Stripes newspaper at Cu Chi, South Vietnam on Sept. 10, 1969. (AP Photo/Mark Godfrey)